by R J Scott
That was Adler, the one the captain, in my interview with him that morning, had chosen to highlight as “not exactly vocally critical nor entirely supportive.”
I was scarlet and I knew it, and Adler smirked at me. Asshole.
He wasn’t the first person to smirk at me, and he wouldn’t be the last. Adler Lockhart was a good-looking man, but then a lot of the players on this damn team were hot and right on to burning. Take Arvy with his goofy smile and his long wavy hair, or Coach Madsen with his intense blue stare and air of authority.
“Little bit talk,” Stan said, his voice loud and booming in the cavernous underground parking.
I glanced from Stan to the others. I wasn’t sure Adler wanted to talk. He was still smirking, but at the same time he looked like he was trying to edge away. The only thing stopping him was that he was pinned between Stan, Arvy, and my car.
I glanced at my watch, like I had to assess if I had the time to stop and talk. Of course I had time. Lots of time. All that was waiting for me at my place was takeout and a night of reading my notes. Oh, and catching up on the hundred or so Facebook messages from my family.
“I can give you five minutes,” I said, to qualify the importance of my time and reinforce my status. It was vital that I didn’t join in with discussions outside the official meetings; I had to stay outside the hockey circle, so that I could maintain a perspective on how things were playing out. Informal meetings didn’t get things done.
Stan pulled aside his shirt and showed me a tattoo. I had to peer closely, because I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, or even why it was being shown to me. It looked like a cartoon character; a Pokémon or something.
“Hulk,” Stan said, and looked at me expectantly like I was supposed to understand a word. I don’t speak any Russian, though, so I looked at Coach for help.
“What he’s saying,” Coach Benning said, “is that he likes Ten, a lot, and that Ten and he had tattoos the same day, and that if you end up hanging Ten out to dry, then he will have something to say about it and go all Hulk on your ass.” The coach’s tone was easy, but there was a thread of steel in there.
“You got all that from one word?” I asked, and looked up at Stan, who was still scowling.
Coach only smiled. “He’s a man of few words. English ones, anyway.”
Stan clapped a hand on my shoulder, and jeez, he was one strong man. For a split second, fear skittered through me, but I pushed the fear back down where it belonged. No one here was going to hurt me.
I edged out of Stan’s reach and offered up my most reassuring smile. Stan looked at me, and then he smiled as well.
Seemed like we had an agreement going.
“Are we done talking about cock now?” Adler said loudly, breaking the accepting vibe in the small group. He underscored the words by grabbing suggestively at his groin. “Unless we’re whipping them out.”
“Jesus Christ, Ads,” Arvy snapped, and elbowed him.
Adler grinned. “All I’m saying is some of us have actual sex to go home to and don’t spend all day jawing about it.”
Then he shoved his way past Arvy, who shoved him back before letting him go.
“Asshole,” Arvy muttered, but it wasn’t said with heat. I exchanged glances with him, and he gave that single-shoulder shrug of “What can you do?”
I mentally added Adler to my list of concerns.
The drive home was one of my better commutes, the traffic not too heavy and an audio book a quiet background for my thoughts. I liked music, but sometimes just the drone of words was enough to allow me to center and collect everything together.
I’d been lulled into a false sense of security today, or at least that was what I decided. Everyone had been so accommodating, thoughtful, and encouraged by my words… and then there was Adler. I knew the team was facing a rocky few months, maybe longer, but random comments about cock were not what I was looking for.
I looked up his bio as soon as I walked through the door; he was the one I needed to watch. Apart from his name, there were all kinds of complicated stats, which I made a good guess at and looked the rest up online.
Adler Kincaid Lockhart
Born Nov.4, 1993, Brampton, Maine
6’4 219 lbs.
Left Wing—shoots Left
Last Season—GP 57 – G 31– A 23 – P 54– Plus/Minus 5 – PIM 51 – PPG 19 – GWG 4 – OTG 3- S% 18.2
Seemed pretty straightforward.
I’d met guys like him before. Either he’d been checking me out that morning and he was in the closet, or he was a homophobic asshole and didn’t give a shit who knew it. He’d used the word cock today, and been highly suggestive, so I made some notes about appropriate language, against his name in particular and the rest of the team in general.
Chinese ordered, I sat at the table and decided I’d put off checking family messages long enough. No doubt it would be the typical inane run of news about Zach and Adam and their plumbing business, or David complaining about the economy affecting construction and his electrician business, or maybe it would be Louise talking about daycare and how she wished sometimes that working in daycare didn’t involve children.
Then again, it could be my mom, worrying about me being the only one not living in the old hometown. My moving away from Alton Heights, Michigan, and attending NYU had been both something to be proud of and something to worry her. Add on the fact that I’d never gone home after college, instead buying a place in Harrisburg, and I was apparently the reason she had gray hair.
Privately, I wasn’t the only one of her five children who knew she dyed her hair every four weeks, regular as clockwork, to keep it flawlessly blonde. She was a homemaker—you name it and she did it in the name of looking out for the family. Bake sales, community events, dinner on the table every night at six, she did it all.
I answered Zach’s message about Mom’s seventieth birthday event. “Yes, I’ll be there, tell me when.” I replied to David and Louise in a similar way, because it seemed three out of four of my siblings were convinced I wouldn’t turn up to Janet Foxx’s party.
I loved my mom. After my dad died ten or so years ago she’d been there for me as much as she could, and there was no way I’d miss the event.
Adam’s message was just one long joke about a rabbi in a bar and didn’t really make sense. I typed LOL anyway, and hoped that it was funny and not some serious story about an actual rabbi he’d met in a bar.
So when the Chinese arrived and I’d tipped it onto a plate, I had one more person to talk to, and I thumbed through my contacts for Mom, steeling myself to answer all the usual questions.
“Finally my baby calls,” she said by way of a hello. “I nearly sent Zach to find out if you were still alive. You never call, you never visit…”
Wow, she hadn’t waited long to lay the guilt over me. “Mom, you know I’d come back if I could.”
“You still working with that actor?”
“No, with a hockey team now, as a social media awareness and crisis management support officer.”
“A what now?”
“A social—”
“Oh,” she interrupted. “You should talk to David about hockey. You remember Calvin, his friend from junior high? Well his cousin’s friend’s brother… or was it his brother’s cousin? Wait, that wouldn’t make sense, would it? Anyhow, this young boy has moved lock stock and barrel up north, playing for some team.”
North to my mom meant Canada, and no, I didn’t recall a Calvin, or know what the hell she was talking about. I’m the youngest of five children, with a big gap between me and the next sibling up, Louise, my only sister. Mom and Dad had me late—she was forty-four and pregnant with her fifth, and now, as I neared twenty-six, my strong-as-an-ox mom was reaching her seventieth. All those years she’d given me and my siblings meant I could stand to listen to her rambling on about a kid I didn’t know.
“So you got a boyfriend yet?”
That blindsided me, the question coming ou
t of nowhere, and entirely separate from the subject of Calvin’s kind-of-cousin who played hockey.
“No, Mom,” I said.
“You just dating casually?” she asked.
I cut her off before she began to ask me about my sex life, and believe me, she loved asking about that. “Yes, a hockey player,” I lied.
“Good. I want to see you enjoying life.”
“I do, Mom.”
“So are you coming for my surprise party next month?”
“Mom, jeez,” I spluttered. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”
“Oh, so there is one, then.”
Shit. I’d just been played by my mother.
“No,” I said, but it really was too late. “Mom, I have to go; my takeout has arrived.”
“Okay, Layton. You take care, now, and call me more often.”
“I will, Mom.”
Guilt at lying to her poked at me insistently, but I tried to ignore it. I shoveled in a fork of noodles and opened my iPad with my other hand, typing a quick message to Louise, who I knew was the chief organizer of Mom’s birthday, admitting what had happened. There wasn’t an immediate reply; I hadn’t expected one.
Between my four siblings, there were four spouses and at last count, ten children, Louise leading the pack with five children all by the age of thirty-one, the youngest only a couple of months old now.
I was seriously the odd one out in that family.
The only one to go to college and get a degree, the only one with a career that pulled in good money, the only one who moved away.
I went to bed with a hundred questions in my head, all focused around the Railers and my plans for the team. First off I needed to talk to each player, and I moved Adler Lockhart up the list.
I got the feeling that the gorgeous man with the come-to-bed eyes and the seriously un-PC attitude was the one to watch.
Two
Adler
I crawled behind the wheel of my car, the seat of the BMW 540i cradling my stupid, sorry ass like a finely crafted Italian leather driving glove, of which I had a pair floating around in there somewhere. Maybe in the trunk? Who knew. And more importantly, who cared? I looked at myself in the rearview.
“You are literally the biggest bag of dicks ever to suck air, Adler,” I told my reflection. The dude in the mirror totally agreed.
I slammed the driver’s side door shut. My forehead met the steering wheel. What the hell was my issue? Why did I always do this? Meet a hot guy, make some crack about his bladder control, feel like an ass, then compound my asshole status by making an even worse joke when I saw the incredibly hot man a second time.
“Massive bag of dicks,” I murmured as I bounced my brow off the wheel a few times.
When the pain started to set in, I stopped with the head-banging. It didn’t feel right without music anyway. I cranked up the Poison CD in the top-of-the-line stereo system, then proceeded to blow my eardrums up. Nothing like Bret Michaels and C.C. Deville to jam your blues away. Pity even C.C. wasn’t working this time. That was when you knew it was bad. 80s hair bands cured every ill ever.
I cranked over the engine and threw the Beemer into gear. Time to go home. Eat. Grab a nap. Drown myself in the shower.
“Note to self. Check best way to drown in shower without actually dying, because Santa is coming soon and yay, Christmas.” Pfft.
Driving to my condo, I ran over the day and groaned yet again. I was trying too hard. I knew it. That was Adler, though. Sing, dance, and toss out stupid jokes like a jester because of that one time Dad thought your knock-knock joke was clever.
Knock knock!
Adler, please, I’m trying to work. Go find Apollo and pester him.
Knock knock!
Fine, okay, who’s there?
Oswald.
Oswald who?
Oswald my bubble gum!
Oswald what?
Not Oswald. I swallowed—it sounds like Oswald.
That’s clever, son, now go find Apollo.
I jumped when the guy behind me laid on his horn. Shit, how had I gotten down by the capitol building already? Lost in the past would get me wrapped around a telephone pole in the present.
Bret and C.C. were now talking about what the cat had dragged in. Great song. Fuck my life. Shit. I’d need to find a way to make that poor stiff stud smile tomorrow. Maybe I could lay that great Oswald knock-knock joke on him, because it had worked so many wonders with Dad. Not.
Home came into view. I swung into the parking lot and sat in my designated spot after cutting the engine.
The Executives. Twenty elite condominiums for those with executive tastes. And executive-sized trust funds, one of which I possessed. Money was not an issue for the Lockhart family. Dad was a legend in the field of corporate takeovers. Mom was a legend in the field of traveling and having affairs to counteract how lonely she was because Dad was always taking over corporations. But hey, I had lots of zeroes in my bank account, and that was what mattered. Money. Spending it and making more of it.
The ride up to my penthouse was agony. Why? Why did they pipe in such shitty elevator music? Why not something from RATT, or maybe a little Winger? Why had that guy at the stadium looked so fucking edgy, and not the avant-garde kind of edgy? Why was his mouth so lush? Why had I asked about his bladder? Fucksticks. I was a butt plug of epic size and girth.
As soon as the doors opened, I stalked across the small lobby that visitors to my prestigious home saw first. It was all decorated and shit. Some guy with pink hair and a tight ass had done it for me when I’d been traded to the Railers. He and I had hooked up once after the condo and lobby had been revamped to his specs. He’d been really picky and totally not my type, but I’d been feeling alone and vulnerable. Also, he’d laughed at my jokes, so that had earned him a good fuck.
I threw my duffel down the moment I stepped into my apartment.
“Lucy, I’m home!” I shouted, then grabbed the bills from the side table. Utilities, mostly. Apollo would handle those. I’d been hoping for maybe a postcard from my parents. Where were they at the moment? France? No. Greece? No. Shit, I couldn’t keep track. “Apollo, dude, where are Cole and Karrie Anne?” I never called them mom and dad, they’d demanded I call them Cole and Karrie Anne and I was cool with that. You get used to things after a while.
“They’re down in Florida playing golf with the orange troll man until Friday, then they’re off to Capri for the holidays.”
“Oh yeah.” Great. More hand-crafted leather sandals I would never wear.
I padded through my living room. It was all glass and chrome, white and blue. I inhaled deeply and picked up the scent of something celeryish and that coconut-and-melon shampoo Apollo used. Over in the corner were boxes that could only be Christmas decorations. Why did Apollo insist on putting shit up when no one aside from me and him would see the tinsel and tiny little wooden reindeer statues was beyond me. I looked out at the city and sighed at the snow lightly falling. I hadn’t had a family holiday since… forever ago.
Stepping into the kitchen, I found Apollo at the stove. He looked over his shoulder and immediately frowned.
“You look like shit. What happened?”
“The bills are here.” I whipped them onto the marble counter, then draped a leg over one of three stools at the island.
“Yeah, I know, I brought them up.”
Apollo tossed some fresh parsley into his creation with flair. He did everything with flair and a bit of flamboyance. Apollo Vasquez was my oldest and dearest friend. His mother was head of domestic affairs for my mother’s home in Maine, where I’d grown up. Mom owned the four homes in the States, Dad owned the six overseas.
Apollo was my age, twenty-four, and had grown up with me. We were like brothers, even though he’d gone to public school at six and I’d been shipped off to the Northwood Academy for Boys. He’d been the first boy I’d ever kissed. He was the only person who had listened to me crying because my parents never came to an
y of my games when I was a young teen and was so fucking confused about life, me, and my need to kiss handsome boys like Apollo. After a few kisses and cuddles, I’d come to the realization that Apollo and I weren’t meant to be more than best friends. He’d quickly agreed, and we’d grown that much closer. He was my friend, soul brother, cook, personal assistant, and ass-kicker when it was needed, which was pretty much on a daily basis—the ass-kicking, that is.
“So what’s wrong?”
I plucked a wedge of carrot from the salad he’d tossed together. The man had serious cooking skills and a wicked-keen way of seeing into me. He spun from his pot, folded his arms over his lean chest, and pinned me to the wall with deep brown eyes.
“I met this guy…”
That brought some light into his eyes. “Oh? Good!” He was always after me to date more and come out. Embrace my inner gay man. Stop trying to impress my parents. Dress better and learn to use the toilet brush, for God’s sake.
“Oh, not good.” I tossed the carrot into my mouth and chewed. Apollo rolled his eyes. “No, do not do that,” I said around the carrot. He turned back to his pot and stirred with a vengeance. “See, when we first ran into each other he was obviously having some sort of episode. Is that soup?”
“Yes, it’s celery soup.” He threw me a dark look. “And of course, you being Adler, you said something that you thought would be funny but was the exact opposite.”
I stared at the wiry man with the undercut and eyebrow piercing. “Maybe.”
“You’re such a twat,” he said as he ladled out two bowls of soup then carried them over to the island. “Here—be careful, it’s hot.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I feel like I have to explain these things to you, because you naturally slip into four-year-old Adler-mode even though you’re now six feet two.”
“Four,” I corrected gently.
“Anything over six feet doesn’t matter.”
“Not when you’re five feet nothing,” I commented, then spooned up some creamy soup and blew on it.